Friday, June 26, 2015

We are on to Unit 6 of My Father's World Kindergarten! We are working on T is for Turtle this week.

Our first project this week was to make paper plate turtles. This was a very simple project. We just cut out four legs, a head, and a tail to glue onto each turtle. The kids then colored the "shells".

Next up for this week we found a turtle shell while out in the woods for a turtle hunt. The turtle was long dead so we brought the shell home to inspect. We talked about the spine that was visible inside the shell and the children played "puzzle" with the camouflage covering that was falling off. Our son found this project to be the most interesting.

All that was left this week was to find a live turtle to inspect. We went on several unsuccessful turtle hunts this week. We had given up on the project when my brother came over to the farmhouse unannounced. It seems he found this turtle while he was working in his woods and thought of us.
We had a lot of fun checking him out!

We enjoyed learning about turtles this week! Have you completed T is for Turtle? If so I would love to hear about it!

Friday, June 19, 2015

My Father's World Kindergarten Unit 5 had to be one of our favorite units to complete. N is for Nest was a massive hit with our little ones...and our big ones as well!

After doing our worksheets, blend ladders, short vowel songs, and reading our book for this unit it was time for some projects!

My father has an interest in birds and gave us several bird themed magazines. We went through the magazines and chose the birds we liked the most. After picking our birds we discussed the birds names, where they lived, the types of nests they used, what they ate, and any specific characteristics of the chosen bird. We then pulled out every 5 yr olds favorite items....scissors and glue! The girls enjoyed making collages of their favorite birds to hang in their rooms. Even the big girls and their brother got in on the action.

After learning all about birds it was time to become birds! I announced that they were all little birds and we needed to start making our nests. I expected the kids to make small life sized nests....nope...they were making nests big enough for them to actually climb into! Luckily our farmhouse is on the edge of a large wooded area. The kids spent the evening searching for sticks and other building materials.

My favorite would have to be watching them "fly" their sticks in to their nests!

After their nests were done of course they needed eggs to fill them with. I volunteered some plastic Easter eggs for the project. Nope. That wasn't going to work for my birds. They wanted REAL eggs...from my fridge. I could just imagine 6 rotten eggs in random places in my backyard. I could just smell the rotten stench when one was "found" with a foot. I couldn't do it. I had some really disappointed children. If you are doing this project and think your children will want real eggs I would recommend hard boiling some eggs before hand.

The end of our N is for Nest unit included seeing some real birds in action. We have been very lucky to have three birds nests on our front porch. Two of the nests are in current use by Barn Swallows. The children have enjoyed watching the mama and daddy birds come and go. They love to talk about the eggs and count how many each nest has as the days go by. I am sure when the eggs finally hatch there will be a lot of commotion at our house.

I couldn't have planed this next thing if I had tried. While at my parent's house we found a baby bird inside their living room! I managed to catch the bird and released it back into the wild. We did take a moment to gently examine the little (very mad) guy.

As you can see we had a wonderful time with this unit! If you have completed N is for Nest I would love to hear about your projects!

Friday, June 12, 2015

We are up to unit 4 with our kindergarten curriculum. This
week we learned A is for Apple. On top of the worksheets and activities we have
been doing in the previous weeks we added the short vowel song to our daily activities.
I know the curriculum only says to do the short vowel song and the textured
letters once per week. They however are a good review and only take a few
seconds so we do them each day as part of our routine.

This week the twins enjoyed the math worksheet that came
with the unit. I am constantly surprised by how well they understand the
phonics worksheets and their grasp on the letter sounds from previous weeks. I
admit I am a bit worried about week 6 when we start reading CVC words but I am
trying not to borrow trouble.

Also this week I have seen a marked improvement from the
twins on their ability to write their names. They are constantly concerned that
their work will be mixed up with their twins work. I have had them writing
their names on each of their worksheets. It seems to really be helping
especially with our youngest twin who as of 4 weeks ago couldn’t write even one
letter of her name. She still lacks confidence to do it alone but if I rest my
hand gently on top of hers she is now able to write it completely on her own.

For this week’s activities we found the star inside of the
middle of an apple (several of my children doubted that it was in there).

We also made a collage of red foods from pictures in our
seed catalogs. We discussed what the food item was and if we had ever had that
item to eat. There were several items we
had never eaten such as goji berries. We will have to be on the lookout the
next time we go to the grocery store for some new red foods to eat.

I had intended to make an apple pie this week. We however
had two birthday parties for our son, one with his siblings on his birthday and
one with family over the weekend. Added to that was a trip to the aquarium for
a field trip. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the idea of making an apple
pie from scratch.It would be a good
activity for a quieter week.

If you have completed My Father's World unit 4 I would love to hear about your projects!

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Just for the record I am not a baseball fan. Honestly I find the entire sport to be very dull. I however am determined to expose my children to all different sorts of things and experiences. With that in mind I loaded up my children and my mother and headed to a Minor League Lexington Legends game.

We attended on of the Education Days at the ball park. It was one of the only times when the size of our family did not draw any extra attention. We were surrounded by school groups and families of all sizes.

We however got some pretty crummy tickets and found ourselves seated in the outfield. Luckily since we bought our tickets with a group of friends we had some clout. After one of the members of our group complained we received free tickets to another game this year.

Apparently even though I was enthusiastic about the game my children inherited my non-love of the game. We were hot and miserable by the 4th inning. We called it a day at that point and headed to a local fast food restaurant for some much needed air conditioning. Hey at least we got to make some memories and we can now say we have seen a minor league baseball game! We may use our free tickets down the line for a night game when it is cooler and we are able to get better seats.

The title got my attention so I was willing to give it a read through. This book covers a lot of ground in short to the point sections.

Frugal Living

Food & Drink

Travel

Health & Beauty

Fun & Entertainment

Shopping & Bargain Hunting

Green Living

Education & Self-improvement

Personal Finance

Financial Planning & Budgeting

Credit Cards & Debt

Investing Your Money

Housing & Home Improvements

Career & Money-Making Ideas

That is a lot of information in one book! The topics covered range from storing leftover stock in ice cube trays to how to pick a good mutual fund.

I found information on homeschooling on a budget, how to set up an investment club, how to pick a good bottle of wine, ways to cook with beer, and 50 ways just to get more for my health care dollar.

This was a quick and easy read that covered so much ground there is bound to be something for everyone within it's pages! This would especially be a great book for anyone new to frugal living. Check it out and see if there is anything new for you to learn!

**I was not asked to review this book and have in no way benefited from the review process**

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

We have officially finished our fourth week on the farm! This week has been crazy busy and a great deal of fun.

We started off the week fishing with grandma and grandpa. Our children are BIG fans of fishing and couldn't wait to get to the pond and get started. Three of our six children were able to catch fish!

I took advantage of being in a new location to take some cute pictures of our children to send to their father.

This week has been typical early spring in Kentucky with lots of wind and rain. We decided to take advantage of the wind and randomly dry moments to work on our kite flying skills.

Our local library was having a smoothie making class this week. I have several smoothie lovers so we headed over to see if we could learn anything new. We tried a blueberry, peach, strawberry, banana, spinach, avocado, and cocoa smoothie. It was pretty tasty but not a combination I would have tried if not for the class.

Mid week we had some real excitement at our house. Our son turned four years old! We had a very low key party with just his siblings, cake and frozen pizza. We will have a larger party with extended family later in the month but for now we enjoyed being together and eating cake!

We were inspecting our bird eggs this week and discovered that our Mama had been invaded by a Cow Bird. Two of her eggs had been thrown out of the nest by the cow bird and she had laid her own egg into the nest. We had learned about brood parasite birds in our science lessons covering birds so it was interesting to see the process in action. We were sad for mama bird to have lost two of her own babies however. We will continue to watch the nest as the eggs hatch and learn from what happens.

This week we also learned how to feed our tadpoles. It seems they really like spinach leaves that have been frozen and then thawed out.

Lastly this week we took a field trip to Tennessee to enjoy some time in at the aquarium.

What is a trip to Gatlinburg without some black light mini golf and mirror maze action?

We had an amazing week on and off the farm this week and look forward to our future adventures!